50% increase in collisions with wild vehicles during full moon nights

The impact of the moon on our planet, our culture and our society goes beyond the simple effect of tides. Recent research from Texas A&M University, published in the journal Transportation Research Part Dindicates a 45.8% increase in wild vehicle collisions during a full moon.

Kentaro Iio, a Texas A&M alumnus, and Dr. Dominique Lord, a professor in Zachry’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, collected 10 years of crash data in Texas to compare full moon nights with new nights. moon and their corresponding fauna. -vehicle collisions. Non-wildlife collisions during the same periods showed no significant differences.

The study highlights the importance of increased driver caution, especially on brighter nights. It could also help inform transportation policy and improve infrastructure where better safety measures are needed, researchers say.

“I compared very dark nights without illumination from the moon (new moon) to very dark nights with illumination from the full moon,” Iio said. “If you include other lunar phases in the analysis, they appear on the horizon at different times each day, making true apples-to-apples comparisons more difficult.”

Previous studies from around the world, including parts of Spain, Canada and Lithuania, found a similar increase in collision trends during the full moon. Each used different methods and offered many possible reasons to explain the results. Iio and Lord believe a combination of factors could be contributing to this increase. Factors such as driver fatigue at night and increased wildlife activity could warrant further study by transportation and animal behavior experts.

“Even though the lighting is better, it’s still dark,” Lord said. “When you’re driving at night, I’m not sure the lighting from different perspectives is that much more important than during the day.”

This study also divided the data into different regions of Texas to highlight rural and urban areas. The Texas Capital Region was the only region with a lower relative collision risk during a full moon, but the difference was statistically insignificant. The capital area consists of 10 counties stretching from Llano to San Marcos and from La Grange to Georgetown.

The regions were divided based on economic regions defined by the Texas Comptroller. Animal-vehicle collision rates in the High Plains, South Texas, Central Texas and Upper East regions saw large increases on full moon nights, ranging from 57.8% to 125%. . The High Plains region primarily covers the Texas Panhandle.

“Rural areas tend to have higher crash rates during a full moon than urban areas,” Iio said.

Lord further explained that lower density of urban wildlife and urban light pollution could also contribute to lower outcomes in these areas. The effect of moonlighting may be diluted in brighter urban areas.

Identification of wildlife species was beyond the scope of this research. The study also did not take into account variations in lighting intensity over the study period for the geographical areas analyzed. Future studies could account for these gaps when finer resolution data becomes available on traffic volumes, lighting, and wildlife identification by region.

Potential improvements such as increased lighting in rural areas, adding wildlife warning reflectors along rural roads, or increasing emergency services on certain nights could also warrant further review and study. in-depth by scientific, technical and economic experts.